


Twenty-Two

by wonder_at_unlawful_things



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 16:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12172476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_at_unlawful_things/pseuds/wonder_at_unlawful_things
Summary: On November 3rd, 1981, Sirius Black turns twenty-two.





	Twenty-Two

When they take him to the Ministry it is already November first, sometime in the wee hours. He isn’t sure how long it is, how much time has passed in a hysteria that he can’t quite get free of, this anxious gasping laughter that won’t stop, because if it stops everything becomes real, and it can’t be, it isn’t. By the time he comes to himself, stops laughing and sobbing and breathes, they have taken his wand and his hands are shackled. When they bring him into the interrogation room they chain him to the chair. He thinks then that it is the worst place he has ever been, although later it will seem like only the first circle of hell, the calm world of virtuous pagans, devoid of fire and shit and ice.  
They don’t give him Veritaserum, though when he calms down he asks them to, begs them to, starts to shout again and then they put a charm on him so that he cannot speak unless spoken to, can only answer their questions.  
They don’t ask him whether he did it. They don’t ask him why. They ask how long he’s worked for Voldemort, they ask what he knows. He can say nothing, because he has not done these things.  
They have such hate in their eyes, looking at him; he looks angry, looks guilty, cannot stop, cannot speak, because it is his fault, it is, and Remus— will he hear, will he come, will he believe him—  
Thrumming underneath it all, with his wild heartbeat is james is gone james is gone, james and lily are gone, gone —  
Against the charm he screams and screams. 

…

He wakes in Azkaban. For a moment, complete confusion. He blinks and looks—midday, it must be— the sun is shrouded far behind unrelenting grey clouds, but he thinks he can tell where it is, but for a moment he thinks, lying on the stone floor, he might be on the floor of Gryffindor Tower, and for a moment hope rushes in—a nightmare, I had a nightmare, the war and the lies and the dying and James—

And with the unfurling thread of hope comes suddenly a cold and a despair like he has never known in his life, sweeping over him, consuming him, and his eyes fly open— Merlin, Merlin, fuck fuck fuck— and he skitters back into the corner— the corner of his cell, what he now realizes is his cell, in Azkaban, and those things clustering at the bars are Dementors, feeding on his hope, and they are like nothing he has ever seen. Too tall to be human, even if they did not float above the ground; their skeletal hands, fingers too long, so long, like claws, you can almost feel them ripping, tearing— their faces are covered by thin ragged cloaks and thank Merlin, thank everything for that because he knows, just as you know in a nightmare, that their faces must be something wrong. It is hard even to see them, to find words for what they are, because the cold and the despair is so thick— 

You did it you did it you  
You’ll never get out  
He’ll never love you he’ll never forgive you he hates you  
He thinks you killed them  
You did you did you did you did  
James is gone lily is gone james dead lily  
Shattered glass and open eyes, flat

He curls into himself and moans quietly into his knees, and finally they fade away.  
He sobs hard for a few moments and then is distracted even from his great sorrow because there is something strange: he is not dressed as he was; things are different and off and changed, more than the general wrongness from having slept on the cold stone floor, and—oh— how did he get here, the last thing he remembers is the Ministry and then—  
Did they stun him? That would explain the headache. He takes a moment, pushes everything down, the rising swell of terror, and calls on his training. Evaluate your condition, Black, he says to himself in Moody’s stern voice.  
All right. Dull ache aside. The headache feels like the effect of spellwork, it has the aftertaste of magic. There’s a burning on his neck; he puts a hand to it.  
Oh. Raised, painful welts—they feel like letters—they sting, not unfamiliarly—oh.  
Oh god. It’s the feeling of a tattoo, the day after, he remembers this from seventh year, the gray wolf symbol for Remus, and then later, last year, the rune on his chest, nyd— the thing that makes you want things, from that time in the war when he wasn’t sure he did anymore.  
But before now this feeling has always come with a low thrill in his belly, the excitement of removing the bandage and looking at this new good thing, this chosen thing that marked him out as who he was, not who he’d been born— but now, this—  
They’d branded him. This thing on his neck and he didn’t even know what it was— a number? Fuck fuck shit— it almost surprised him, the purity of his rage, that he was capable of it, even here.  
Something else hits— they’d cut his hair (the first and last time they would), close to his skull, like a child with lice, and his scalp burns a little, like they’d charmed it, fuck— and that makes him think of fleas, and that makes him wonder—  
Could he do it, here?  
The consequences might be dire, if there was some kind of ward up— in the tattoo, or on the prison itself— it could kill him.  
But no one knew—(unless— but Remus wouldn’t tell, ever. And Remus thought Peter was dead, so there was no reason— )  
Before he can think too much, he shifts, and a weight of despair he hadn’t even realized was there is suddenly gone. He breathes it in a moment, this small relative freedom, and then shifts back, because someone must be coming, someone has to come, to explain this to him.  
Maybe they’ll realize their mistake and let him out.  
Shifting back makes him notice his clothes again— not his. Loose, ill-fitting, thin and shabby. Striped. A prison uniform, which— of course— but somehow it still comes as a shock.  
They took my clothes, he thinks, and feels violated, thinking of his lonely body, inert, without his consciousness, lying in the cold, naked. Those cruel-eyed men with slit mouths, so sure of his guilt, looking at him.  
Day fades into night. The screams get worse, at night. No one comes, but still he thinks it is too risky to turn into Padfoot, in case they do— if they catch Peter they might come, even in the dead of night (and then he pushes this down because whenever he thinks it he can feel them getting closer, crowding outside the door)— so he curls up in his corner and falls into a murky half-sleep, the chill and loss of the Dementors waking him whenever they pass in the night. 

…

When he wakes up, they are already outside of his cell, looking at him as though he is an animal; some Ministry twat that he doesn’t know and Dumbledore, looking bemusedly down at him over his spectacles. He doesn’t even look angry.  
He hadn’t looked angry back in sixth year, either, when Sirius’s temper almost killed Severus.  
And Remus.  
Sirius pulls himself to his feet. He knows he must look half mad already, dirty and exhausted, the numbers on his neck red and angry. He’s hungry too, he realizes, and thirsty, and his traitor body insists on announcing it; his stomach growls loudly as he tries to muster the last reserves of his dignity.  
Under the circumstances, it is somewhat unfortunate that these last reserves are also the oldest; he draws himself up, and, though he tries to prevent it, he knows his face is set in an expression that is pure Black. He used to get points taken for arrogance and cheek when really it was just what his face did when he was trying not to show weakness.  
(the other thing he does, of course, which is worse, is to laugh when he’s terrified, something he’s never been able to break himself of, even though his father used to hit him across the face with an open hand for an insolence which, for the first ten years, was largely unintended).  
“Sirius,” Dumbledore says.  
“Headmaster,” says Sirius, even though he’s been calling him Albus since a month after graduation, when they all joined the Order. He can’t keep the urgency out of his voice, fifteen again and trying desperately to plead his case. “Have you found him?”  
“Found whom, Sirius?” Dumbledore asks.  
The Ministry minion spits at him, “Your master is dead, Black.”  
“Voldemort’s dead?” Sirius asks, astonished, and the Ministry man flinches at the name.  
“He’s dead, Cornelius,” Dumbledore says, “and was that what you were asking, Sirius?”  
“No,” he says, his mouth dry, mind racing, if he’s dead then where’s Peter, how, is Remus all right— how? “No,” he says, “I meant Peter.”  
“Pettigrew?” the Ministry man—Cornelius— sputters. “Is this some kind of sick attempt at a joke?”  
“Peter Pettigrew is dead, Sirius,” says Dumbledore. “Along with thirteen Muggles. You killed them. There are witnesses.”  
“I didn’t,” Sirius says, “I didn’t—”  
“They found his finger,” says the Ministry man.  
“Please, Cornelius,” says Dumbledore. He turns to Sirius. “You know, I’m sure, that they’ve all said the same thing: he shouted that you had betrayed James and Lily, and then you blew up the street.”  
Hearing their names out loud is a harder blow than he expected and he has to draw in his breath sharply.  
“I didn’t,” he says, finally. “Please, I didn’t.”  
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” says Dumbledore, almost sadly, “but in light of the evidence, you have been sentenced to life in Azkaban.”  
His knees go out a little and he can’t keep his hand from going to his mouth.  
“But I—” he grasps for words, concepts. “A trial? I’ll testify under Veritaserum, please, Albus, I asked them to use it but they wouldn’t, you can look at my wand, Priori Incantatem, please, Peter is out there, and—”  
“The Minister does not believe a trial is required,” says Dumbledore, and Sirius has to catch himself on the bars.  
Cornelius moves back, half-alarmed, half-disgusted, the look on his face something like Sirius’s mother’s when he mentioned anything to do with Gryffindor.  
“Tell Remus,” Sirius manages, finally. “Please tell him, at least— tell him Wormtail’s alive— tell him— we switched—tell him I’m sorry—”  
“We will certainly not pass on some sort of coded message to your— roommate,” sneers Cornelius.  
“Remus had NOTHING to do with this!” Sirius shouts, and Cornelius flinches back again, this time in pure fear. Sirius, despite himself, feels a thrill of enjoyment shoot up his spine. Good.  
“No one has accused Mr. Lupin of anything,” says Dumbledore calmly.  
“Not that it would do any good,” Cornelius says, “since your mighty Dark Lord was defeated by an infant.”  
Sirius steps back. “Harry?” he gasps, eyes wide. “Is he all right? Is he safe? I gave him to Hagrid, tell me nothing happened—”  
“Why, so your Death Eater friends can go after him?” says Cornelius.  
Sirius half-snarls and yanks up the sleeve of his robe, showing the blank space on his left forearm. “Because he’s my godson, damn you,” he hisses.  
“Both of you, please,” Dumbledore says, as though they are third years in his office bickering about who started it. “Goodbye, Sirius,” he says then, and turns to go.  
“Wait,” Sirius says, almost without thought, because while they’re here the Dementors aren’t, because this can’t be true, it can’t— he’ll never see Remus again and he can’t—he has so much to say, to apologize for, and since first year they’ve never spent more than a day or two out of reach of each other, by touch or speech or owl, even that whole awful span of time when they weren’t speaking, still, he was there, and to be unable to tell Remus, to apologize, to say all the desperate things he’s thinking—I should have trusted you I’m so sorry I love you— but all he can think to say is “I don’t—I don’t know what day it is.” They look at him, both of them now, like he’s nothing, and suddenly he needs this, needs to know how long he’s been here, needs a place to start counting from, or everything will fall apart and he’ll go mad and he knows it. “Please.”  
Dumbledore looks at him a long moment.  
“It’s November third,” he says, and Sirius finally breaks and pitches to his knees.  
Of course, Dumbledore knows already what he’s said; Dumbledore would have sent the letter, signed the Apparation testing form.  
“It’s my birthday,” Sirius says, anyway, to nothing; dimly he registers that Dumbledore and Cornelius are already gone. “I’m twenty-two.” And then a great sob wrenches itself free of him because all at once there are so many things; he’s here, here forever, how long will that be, fuck, fuck, and it’s already started, the breaking of things, the ripping apart of the fabric of his life and James’s, ended; already he is twenty-two and James will never be, James and Lily will be twenty-one forever and he will not, he cannot reach them anymore than he can Remus, trapped in this place between life and death, a breathing corpse; and how long, he thinks as the howls start around him, echoing like the slamming of prison doors and Dumbledore and Cornelius recede and the Dementors coalesce in their wake, how long until his mind grasps what his body is too dumb to understand and departs too, leaving him senseless but stubbornly, endlessly breathing?

…  
He allows himself two days of self-pity and then he starts to plan. They will find out eventually, they will have to, and if he is mad when they do then it will all be for nothing. Something will happen and they will come back. Remus won’t believe it— but, whispers Azkaban, seductive, despair so much easier than hope, but he will, Sirius, of course he will. You believed it of him.  
Fuck OFF, he tells it sternly, and it sort of works. Anger is better than happiness, they aren’t as attracted to it, they don’t want to steal it. Anger and the hot conviction of his innocence, whiting out everything else. The edges of some of his memories are fraying, he knows that already, but anger whites it out, anger helps. And so does being Padfoot, thank Merlin, thank Remus, thank James—he still can’t think their names without a hot edge of pain— but he can’t focus as well, and he knows if he stays that way all the time a different kind of madness waits.


End file.
